The students of the Music Academy of A. Schnittke Performed the opera of Rodion Shchedrin “Not Love Alone” at the start of the new Year.
The full Video of the staging can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcVw0KjdYHA&feature=youtu.be
The plot of the opera is based on the tales of Sergey Antonov with some chastushkas and is dedicated to his wife – the great ballerina – Maya Plisetskaya. “I am writing on a Evgeny Onegin from a collective farm” said the author 1961 and compared the singer of the main role not only with Tatiana from Onegin, but also with Carmen as Not love alone is a story about love and not a melodrama as some might have thought.
Even though the opera was written for the Boslhoi Theatre, Shchedrin tried to omit the so popular at that time monumental ensembles with red banners and wrote a chamber opera about the life of ordinary people. The art director Alexander Tishler and conductor Evgeny Svetlanov couldn’t also help this opera to become the second Evgeny Onegin of Soviet time. 1972 Rodion Shchedrin made a new version of the opera for the opening of the «Moscow Chamber Music Theatre” for the director Boris Pokrovsky which was played for a long time in this version.
It has been played not only in Moscow, but in some cities around Russia, but after some time disappeared from the stages. Nevertheless in the last years the opera enjoys its comeback and was performed numerous times in Russia and abroad.